Adventures in Paddle Boarding

During our Hilton Head Island vacation, a few of us girls decided it would be fun to rent paddle boards for a day. I have never even touched a paddle board, but it looked like fun and is something I always wanted to try. And, really…how hard can it be?

I swear the water was way choppier than it looks!

I fell. A lot. However, after a few tries, I started to figure out how to balance as the waves hit and was able to stay on my board for a long time without falling. In fact, I became so confident on the board, that the next day we attempted yoga poses, headstands, cartwheels and even pyramids. It was awesome (and also included many falls). At this point, I was so comfortable that I decided I could take Luna with me for a ride on the board.

It was a hit…

This all happened in about 5 seconds.

To this day, if I mention paddle boarding Luna immediately says, “I fall off the boat. I get water in my eyes.” I’ve clearly traumatized her.

Even with all the falling and crashing, 24 hours was just not enough time on a paddle board. I had to have more and was a little overly excited when I found out about the Nashville Paddle Company. Bella and I signed up for an hour-long fitness paddle boarding class (because who needs an intro. class??? *Spoiler alert: EVERYONE) and couldn’t wait to try it out.

The day of our class was overcast and slightly cooler than the miserably hot summer days we’ve been having. We pulled up to Percy Priest Lake feeling like a bundle of nerves and full of excitement. The Nashville Paddle Company is located in a very small building right in the middle of the Hamilton Creek Recreation Area. We were greeted by two super friendly girls who told us what to grab, wear and bring on the water. We met our fitness instructor, Holly, grabbed our paddles and headed towards the lake! Before stepping foot in the water, Holly asked us if we’d ever had a paddle boarding lesson. We explained that we both just rented one on the beach and tried to figure it out ourselves. She immediately stopped us and insisted we learn the correct way to stand, hold the paddles and steer before we actually get on the board. Good thing too, turns out we were not doing anything correctly!

We began buy paddling out to the middle of the water and were quickly told to hop off our boards and swim to our instructor’s board and back. Holy cow. I was not prepared for this. Swimming is hard! We continued the class with more cardio moves, like flutter kicks, push ups from the water to the board, etc. Luckily, these moves were the hardest, meaning the worst was over!

The rest of the class was spent doing strength exercises and yoga poses.

Warrior pose and lungesDownward Dog

At the end of the class, she let us try more advanced moves too! We chose some to try and she suggested some others. We failed at several, but were surprisingly successful at others!

`look at me!

We were excited about taking this class, but we were beyond thrilled with the actual experience! Besides the perfect weather, beautiful lake and gorgeous sunset over the water, the actual class was great! We are already planning on our next class, but this time we plan to bring a huge group with us (Luna included!). They offer longer boards, so Luna will have more space, plus there won’t be waves to knock us over.

There are also picnic tables and nice playgrounds right next to Nashville Paddle Company’s hut, perfect for a picnic and playtime after class!

If you live in the Nashville area (or plan to visit) I highly recommend signing up for a class. They offer intro to paddle boarding, yoga, fitness classes and more! We loved doing it for exercise and fun, but I can definitely see it being a great event for a party, office event, girl’s night, date night, whatever really! You can check out their class schedule here. Give it a try and don’t forget to let me know what you think!

Wow! That looks like so much fun! I’ve wanted to try paddle boarding for some time now but being that I’m not very graceful on land, I doubt I could stand up on a board on the water. Thanks so much for sharing 🙂